Section: 2D2 - Earth Mother/Mary.
Number of quotes: 90
1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West
Roger Crowley
Book ID: 2 Page: 201
Section: 2D2
There was nothing left to be done. Both sides understood the climatic significance of the coming day. Both had made their spiritual preparations. According to Barbaro, who of course gave the final say in the outcome to the Christian god, “and when each side had prayed to his god for victory, they to theirs and we to ours, our Father in Heaven decided with his Mother who should be successful in this battle that would be so fierce, which would be concluded next day,”
Quote ID: 9
Time Periods: 7
A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 77
Section: 3C,2D2
Constantine was stressing the ancient tradition of the supreme deity supporting the emperor – even if his own behaviour left it unclear whether this was Jupiter (or Apollo), an abstract Platonic principle, Helios (or Sol Invictus) or the Christian God. It was only after Constantine’s death that Constantinople became an unambiguously Christian city. The city’s cult of the ancient virgin goddess Rhea, left untouched by Constantine, gradually became transformed into that of the Virgin Mary. I
Quote ID: 200
Time Periods: 4
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 218
Section: 2D2
[Bold part used](Elagabalus’) At the time of the Carthaginian wars they had acquired the black stone of the Phrygian Great Mother , and during the last century of the republic the cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis had flourished even when it was officially proscribed. The Great Mother promised fertility and victory, Isis promised everlasting life.
Quote ID: 296
Time Periods: 0
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 16
Section: 2D2
He (Augustus) did build a temple for the Great Mother, now Roman.
Quote ID: 587
Time Periods: 012
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 17
Section: 2D2
Foreign cults had been accepted at Rome since the crisis of the second war with Carthage, late in the third century B.C., when political necessity had caused the introduction to Rome of the cult of the Venus of Eryx in western Sicily and the cult of the great Mother of the Gods from Pessinus in the realm of Attalus, king of Pergamum. From Mount Eryx on a clear day Roman observers could watch the Carthaginian fleet, and in Asia Minor the priests of the Mother proved useful allies to the Roman armies.
Quote ID: 589
Time Periods: 0
Birth of Europe, The
Jacques Le Goff
Book ID: 199 Page: 76
Section: 2D2
The Rise of the Cult of the Virgin Mary. . . .
not until the eleventh century did she acquire a place of central importance in the beliefs and practices of western Christianity. Between the mid eleventh century and the mid-twelfth, the cult of the Virgin lay at the heart of Church reform.
. . . .
She acted as the almost exclusive intermediary between human beings and her son.
. . . .
In fact, she was such a key figure in procuring the salvation of human beings that she was said even to offer her protection in shocking or scandalous circumstances. She protected criminals and sinners whose crimes and sins seemed inexcusable. She pleaded for them and Christ acceded to his mother’s intercessions, however exorbitant they might be.
Quote ID: 4512
Time Periods: 7
Birth of Europe, The
Jacques Le Goff
Book ID: 199 Page: 77
Section: 2D2
A twelfth-century prayer, the Ave Maria, acquired a status comparable to that of “Our Father.” The subsequent more or less constant inclusion of this prayer, from 1215 on, in the penances assigned to sinners making their annual confession, made the cult of Mary a part of the fundamental piety of Christians.
Quote ID: 4514
Time Periods: 7
Birth of Europe, The
Jacques Le Goff
Book ID: 199 Page: 79
Section: 2D2
The cult of the Virgin Mary had led to a feminization of piety and this was combined with what I have called its “dolorization.” In the historical evolution of the image of God, Christ had for many years been represented, in the tradition of the heroes of antiquity, as the conqueror of death, a Christ triumphant. Now he was replaced by a suffering Christ, a Christ in pain.. . . .
Images of not only the crucifixion but also the deposition and the entombment prepared the way for the meditations on death that fueled the fourteenth-century human fascination with the macabre. A Europe of corpses and, slightly later, skulls encompassed the whole of Christendom.
Quote ID: 4515
Time Periods: 67
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 54/55
Section: 2D2,2E4,2E5
vis a vis Cybele, the Great Mother. “The image of the goddess was transported on a chariot amid the acclamations of the faithful, in a manner which seems to prefigure the veneration paid to the statue of Our lady in the streets of contemporary Seville during Holy week.”PJ Note: procession
Quote ID: 974
Time Periods: 047
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 55
Section: 2D2
The appeal of the worship of Isis in Rome was in part due to the magnificence of her rites. This was “to influence the practice of the Catholic Church.”
Quote ID: 976
Time Periods: 234
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 55
Section: 2D2
“When the veneration of the Virgin Mary as the Theotokos, or Mother of God, was introduced (about the time of the destruction of the Serapeum in 391), devotees of Isis were able to continue their worship of the mother-goddess merely by changing her name. In many cases the statues of Isis served as those of her successor-deity Mary.”
Quote ID: 977
Time Periods: 4
Canaanite Myths and Legends (Second Edition)
J. C. L. Gibson
Book ID: 45 Page: 58
Section: 2D2
‘How should you importune dame Athirat of the sea,‘entreat the creatress of the gods?
‘Have you importuned the bull, kindly god,
‘or entreated the creator of creatures?’
And the virgin Anat answered:
‘We will importune (our) mother dame Athirat of the sea,’
‘[we] will entreat the creatress of the gods;
‘[thereafter] we will entreat him.’
Mightiest Baal
Pastor John notes: John’s note: Loeb?
Quote ID: 1047
Time Periods: 0
Catechism Of The Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II
Book ID: 48 Page: 273
Section: 2D2
Paragraph 6, Mary-Mother of Christ, Mother of the Church963 Since the Virgin Mary’s role in the mystery of Christ and the Spirit has been treated, it is fitting now to consider her place in the mystery of the Church. “The Virgin Mary…is acknowledged and honored as being truly the Mother of God and of the redeemer….She is ‘clearly the mother of the members of Christ’…since she has by her charity joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the Church, who are members of its head.”[500] “Mary, Mother of Christ, Mother of the Church.”[501]
Quote ID: 1107
Time Periods: 7
Catechism Of The Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II
Book ID: 48 Page: 274
Section: 2D2
. . . also in her Assumption966 “Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.”[506]
Quote ID: 1108
Time Periods: 7
Catechism Of The Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II
Book ID: 48 Page: 275
Section: 2D2
Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation. . . . Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helpers, Benefactress, and Mediatrix.”510
Quote ID: 1109
Time Periods: 7
Celtic Goddesses
Miranda Green
Book ID: 50 Page: 189
Section: 2D2,2E5
There is reason to believe that the cult of the Virgin Mary in the early Christian period had strong links with that of the pagan Celtic mother-goddesses. Jean Markale {7} cites a clear example: on the site where Chartres Cathedral was to be built there was a subterranean sanctuary on which stood a statue of a mother-goddess. The shrine was known as ‘Our Lady under the Ground’.
Quote ID: 1115
Time Periods: 012347
Celtic Goddesses
Miranda Green
Book ID: 50 Page: 189
Section: 2D2,2E5
Mary was not a Celtic saint but her cult had much in common with that of canonised women in Wales and Ireland and, indeed, with pagan Celtic goddesses. One way in which this manifested itself was in the association between Mary, holy water and healing. Sacred wells with alleged curative powers were dedicated to her all over Wales: Penrhys in Glamorgan and Hafod-y-Llyn are just two examples. {8}
Quote ID: 1116
Time Periods: 7
Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 31
Section: 2D2
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. IIA curse then upon the man who started this deception for mankind, whether it be Dardanus, who introduced the mysteries of the Mother of the Gods;
Quote ID: 3014
Time Periods: 0123
Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 169
Section: 2D2
Exhortation to the GreeksLet these shame you into salvation. For instance, the comic poet Menander, in his play The Charioteer, says:
No god for me is he who walks the streets
With some old dame, and into houses steals
Upon the sacred tray.{a}
For this is what the priests of Cybele{b} do. It was a proper answer, then, that Antisthenes used to give them when they asked alms of him: “I do not support the mother of the gods; that is the gods’ business.”{c} Again, the same writer of comedy, in his play The Priestess, being angry with prevailing custom, tries to expose the godless folly of idolatry by uttering these words of wisdom:
For if a man
By cymbals brings the God where’er he will,
Then is the man more powerful than God.
But these are shameless means of livelihood
Devised by men.{d}
Quote ID: 3027
Time Periods: 0123
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 167/168
Section: 3B,2B,2D2
The days of the Olympians are nearly over, and there is nostalgia for the glorious past. But since the world is still unthinkable without Rome, Venus must survive, because Venus, as another part of the poem recalls, was the mother of all Rome’s glory; ….. . . .
Another patriotic goddess who defied the decline of the Olympians by her continued impact on the later Roman world was Vesta. Her shrine in the forum is repeatedly shown on coins and medallions of Septimius and subsequent emperors, and the neighbouring courtyard devoted to her service contained many dedications persisting right up to the fourth century AD. The fire-cult of Vesta (Hestia) corresponded to contemporary Sun-worship and to the fire-altars of Sassanian Persia; and her Vestal Virgins suited contemporary tastes for asceticism and monastic seclusion. As the ancient, everlasting guardian of Rome and its rulers, Vesta in these dangerous times received more devoted veneration than ever.
Quote ID: 4720
Time Periods: 23
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 242
Section: 2D2
It is only the fourth century that sees the development of a cult of Mary as perpetually virgin--Athanasius was among the first to use the term “ever virgin.”
Quote ID: 4945
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 242
Section: 2D2
Doctrinally, the cult reached its climax with the declaration that Mary was Theotokos, Mother of God (still her preferred title in eastern church), which was proclaimed at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
Quote ID: 4946
Time Periods: 5
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 242
Section: 2D2
The idea that she might have died and her body become corrupted became unimaginable, hence her “assumption” into heaven, noted in apocryphal sources for the first time in the late fourth century. In the east the emphasis was on “a dormition” (a falling asleep). Mary came to absorb the attributes of pagan goddesses. Vasiliki Limberis shows how the goddesses Rhea and Tyche, to whom temples had been built by Constantine in Constantinople, gradually became transformed into Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, as Christianity ousted the remnants of paganism in the city in the fourth century.
Quote ID: 4947
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 243
Section: 2D2
A good example of how the apocryphal stories about Mary were adopted by the church hierarchy can be seen in the fifth-century mosaics of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome. The basilica was built by Sixtus III in the 430s in celebration of the declaration of the Council of Ephesus that Mary was the Mother of God. In the Annunciation scene, which presents Mary in great splendour arrayed as a Byzantine princess, she is shown to have been spinning--drawing on an apocryphal story that she was in service in the Temple where she wove a veil for the Holy of Holies. Here Sixtus has appropriated a story with no scriptural support at all in order to make contact with popular devotion.
Quote ID: 4948
Time Periods: 5
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 1.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 336 Page: 23
Section: 2D2
FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY.Jesus said to his parents: “Knew ye not that I must be in my Father’s house?”
13. The words of Luke “and they understood not the sayings which he spake unto them” are especially to be noted here. With these words he silenced the idle talk of those who exalted and praised the Virgin Mary too highly, asserting that she knew everything and could not err.
Quote ID: 7841
Time Periods: 1
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 1.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 336 Page: 25
Section: 2D2
FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY.Even if Mary, the holy Virgin, had done this, it would not be surprising if she had erred. She was the mother of God.
Quote ID: 7843
Time Periods: 17
Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Volume 1.1-2, The
Edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Book ID: 336 Page: 50
Section: 2D2
FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY.The answer to this is not difficult: The church and councils may have been ever so holy, they did not have the Holy Spirit in greater measure than Mary, the mother of Christ, who was also a member, yea, at the time, the most eminent member of the Church. And although she had been sanctified by the Holy Spirit; yet he permitted her at times to err, even in the important matters of faith.
Quote ID: 7844
Time Periods: 17
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 81
Section: 2D2
Cybele....She had her public ceremonies. Lucretius (ii. 608 ff.) gives a striking picture of how ‘The image of the divine mother is carried in dread fashion through mighty lands. Various races according to the ancient custom of the rite call her the Idaean mother’.
Quote ID: 1938
Time Periods: 0
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 133
Section: 2D2
I need hardly say that the difference which we see between Cybele’s area of diffusion and those of the other Oriental deities does not point to any sort of competition. Cybele was early Romanized and did not seem exotic in anything like the same measure as these other cults with Oriental origins.PJ: The Romans knew Cybele as the Great Mother.
Quote ID: 1955
Time Periods: 02
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 136
Section: 2D2
There was indeed a theology which finds expression in many of these cults. To take a striking example: we possess the short creed in verse which a soldier in the third century caused to be inserted on a stone tablet found at Carvoran in Northumbria on the Roman wall:‘Opposite the Lion in the heavenly place in the Virgin wreathed corn ears, inventress of Justice, foundress of cities, the gifts from which it has been our fortune to know the gods. So she is at one and the same time the mother of the gods, Peace, Virtue, Ceres, the Syrian goddess, weighing life and rights in the balance. Syria brought forth a constellation seen in heaven to receive the homage of Libya. Hence we have all learned. So Marcus Caecilius Donatianus serving as tribune in the duty of prefect by favour of the Emperor understood, led by thy deity.’
Here the cult is a religion in which all humanity joins and a religion communicated of favour by revelation.
Quote ID: 1957
Time Periods: 0123
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 13
Section: 2D2
Before the end of the second Punic War, which had so gravely tested the morale and nerves of the Roman people, the Senate had to cut its losses. It came to an agreement with the king of Pergamum to send from Pessinus the black stone of Cybele, whose worship was made official in 204 BC.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Yes!
Quote ID: 5127
Time Periods: 0
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 28
Section: 2D2
But the first deity from the East to be officially consecrated by the Romans within their walls was Cybele of Pessinus.PJ Note: The Cybele and Attis connection may be significant, esp. considering 2E6, Attis’ sun rays
Quote ID: 5130
Time Periods: 0
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 35
Section: 2D2
. . . the Great Mother, who has a prominent place on a lion’s back on the great altar of Pergamum.
Quote ID: 5132
Time Periods: 0
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 36/37/38
Section: 2A4,5C,2D2
Because of the war waged together with Attalus against Philip V of Macedon, common interests united Rome with the king of Pergamum, . . .. . . .
But an earth tremor is supposed to have indicated the irritation of Cybele, whose voice prophesied: ‘Rome is worthy to become the meeting-place of all the gods.’ To which King Attalus is said to have replied: ‘Go, then! You will remain ours. For Rome boasts of Phrygian ancestors’ (Fasti, IV, 265-72). According to Livy (History of Rome, XXIX, 11, 7), Attalus himself accompanied the Roman ambassadors to Pessinus to have the sacred stone handed over to them. It has been conjectured that in fact the king might already have transferred it to Pergamum. However that may be, in this affair (as in so many others) religion and politics were wonderfully in accord: . . .
. . . .
Henceforth, each year from 4 to 10 April festivals and spectacles or ‘Megalesian games’ commemorated the arrival of the Great (Megale) Mother on this sacred hill of Romulus.
. . . .
The dark aerolith from Pessinus was adapted as the head of the cult statue. {38} Like Artemis of Ephesus, Cybele was a black ‘virgin’.
. . . .
For the celebration of the Megalesian Games, the idol was borne ‘on the necks of the galli’ (Ovid, Fasti, IV, 185), by means of a kind of stretcher, as so many statues of saints are still carried on their feast day in Italy, Sardinia and Sicily. During the Lavatio procession, the goddess was enthroned in a chariot pulled by heifers, under a rain of spring flowers (ibid., 345-6).
Quote ID: 5133
Time Periods: 0
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 43
Section: 2D2
With the accession to sovereign power of a member of the gens Iulia which was descended from Aeneas, the Great Mother of Ida acquired a revived legitimacy. So she appears on several occasions in the Aeneid. On the prow of the vessel carrying the founding hero in company with Pallas, the son of Evander, who would give his name to the Palatine, a pair of Phrygian lions symbolizes the Mother’s divine protection (Aeneid, X, 157). It is she whom Aeneas invokes for victory, as the Romans would do to drive Hannibal from the Peninsula.. . . .
At the same time, it has been found that priests of the Mother-cult were recruited from among the household staff of the Palatine. Two freedmen of Augustus and Livia are known to have become respectively priest and priestess of the Great Mother (CIL, VI, 496).
Quote ID: 5135
Time Periods: 01
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 60/70
Section: 2D2
Phrygianism came into its own in the Gauls. {02} No other region in the Empire has yielded so many taurobolic altars (over sixty).. . . .
From the end of the third century, and chiefly during the second half of the fourth, taurobolic monuments reveal the passionate adherence of pagan aristocracy to Mother-worship, at the same time as Isiacism and Mithraism.
Quote ID: 5143
Time Periods: 123
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 74
Section: 2D2
But it was Cybele who survived in the Theotokos. It is known that the Nestorians rejected the epithet which permitted a parallel between the Mother of God and the Mother of the gods. In the early fifth century, Isidore of Pelusium took the trouble to examine this comparison. Did not Julian himself give the goddess the title of ‘Virgin’ (Discourse on the Mother of the Gods, 166, b, by the Emperor Julian)?
Quote ID: 5148
Time Periods: 012345
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 82
Section: 2D2
So we find on Delos as on Cos ‘melanophori’, wearers of the black robe of Isis which later would distinguish monks in the East.
Quote ID: 5149
Time Periods: 01234
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 98
Section: 2D2
All in all, Isis was better adorned than a Spanish Virgin! The Guadiz inscription, incidentally, gives her the title puellaris. In the fourteenth-century BC, a text from Abydos had her say, ‘I am the great Virgin’.
Quote ID: 5152
Time Periods: 0
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 128/129
Section: 2D2
Isis of Many Names, ‘the initial progeny of worlds’ (Apuleius, Metamorphoses, XI, 5, 1) was a long time a-dying.She survived in those of her idols that were used as madonnas. All in all, the refrigerium animae Christianized the invocation to her husband, which was carved on tombstones: ‘May Osiris give thee cool water!’ And when, for the feast of the Epiphany, {16} after a solemn blessing of the water at midnight, the Christians in Egypt went with their pitchers to the banks of the Nile to draw from the beneficial flow, they were simply repeating in their own fashion a very ancient action of their pagan ancestors.
Quote ID: 5165
Time Periods: 047
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 140
Section: 2D2
The Mother-worship cult, officially recognized, enjoyed the benefit of an established sanctuary and financial support.
Quote ID: 5167
Time Periods: 0123
Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Jerome Carcopino
Book ID: 72 Page: 135
Section: 2D2
. . . and before Commodus had entered the congregation of Mithra, Antoninus Pius bore witness by the transparent language of the reverse of his coins that Faustina the Elder, the wife he had lost at the beginning of his reign and whose temple still rears its symbolic form above the Forum, had been able to mount to heaven only in the chariot of Cybele, by the favour of the Mother of the Gods, the Lady of Salvation (Mater deum salutaris).{129}Thus, thanks to the collaboration of oriental mysticism and of Roman wisdom, new and fruitful faiths were born and flourished on the ruins of the traditional pantheon. In the bosom of outworn paganism a creed arose, or rather the sketch of a creed, which represented a genuine redemption of men by the double payment of their merit and of divine assistance.
Quote ID: 2013
Time Periods: 012
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 233
Section: 2D2
Helvidius denied the widely held belief in the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary. He argued that references in the gospels to Jesus’ ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ indicated that Mary and Joseph had subsequent issue and that his view was supported by Tertullian, as indeed it was. Jerome, writing in 383, argued, somewhat speciously, that those mentioned were either children of Joseph by a former marriage or cousins of Jesus, being the children of Mary’s sister.
Quote ID: 5349
Time Periods: 234
Julian: Two Orations of the Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
Book ID: 218 Page: 1
Section: 2D2
I mean, who Attis or Gallus is; and who the mother of the gods: what the particulars are respecting her sacred rites; and on what account they were delivered to us at first: for they were delivered indeed by the most antient Phrygians, and were first of all received by the Greeks, not indeed indiscriminately.
Quote ID: 5394
Time Periods: 01234
Julian: Two Orations of the Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
Book ID: 218 Page: 1
Section: 2B2,2D2
they did not as yet understand the properties of the goddess, and her agreement with Deo, Rhea, and Ceres.
Quote ID: 5395
Time Periods: 01234
Julian: Two Orations of the Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
Book ID: 218 Page: 2
Section: 2D2
But after the Greeks, the Romans received the same sacred rites, the Pythian deity persuading them also to this undertaking, that they might procure the presence of the Phrygian goddess as a military associate in the Carthaginian war.
Quote ID: 5396
Time Periods: 01234
Julian: Two Orations of the Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
Book ID: 218 Page: 2
Section: 2D2
The inhabitants of Rome, the friend of divinity, sent an ambassador to the kings of Pergamus, who then reigned in Phrygia, and ordered him to request of the Phrygians the most holy image of the goddess: but the ambassador receiving the sacred burthen, placed it in a good-sailing vessel, and which was in every respect well adapted to swim over such a length of sea.
Quote ID: 5397
Time Periods: 01234
Julian: Two Orations of the Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
Book ID: 218 Page: 9
Section: 2D2
And thus far the mother of the gods permitted this beautiful and intellectual god Attis, who is similar to the solar rays, to leap and dance.
Quote ID: 5398
Time Periods: 01234
Julian: Two Orations of the Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
Book ID: 218 Page: 9
Section: 2D2
Who then is the mother of the gods? She is indeed the fountain of the intellectual and demiurgic gods who govern the apparent series of things: orcertainly a deity producing things, and at the same time subsisting with the mighty Jupiter; a goddess mighty, after one mighty, and conjoined with the mighty demiurgus of the world. She is the mistress of all life, and the cause of all generation, who most easily confers perfection on her productions, and generates and fabricates things without passion, in conjunction with the father of the universe. She is also a virgin, without a mother, the assessor of Jupiter, and the true parent of all the gods:
Quote ID: 5399
Time Periods: 01234
Julian: Two Orations of the Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
Book ID: 218 Page: 19
Section: 2D2
I alone among all men seem to owe the tribute of thanks to all the gods, but especially to the mother of the gods, not only on account of her beneficence towards me in other affairs, but for her goodness in not neglecting me as one wandering in darkness;
Quote ID: 5401
Time Periods: 4
Julian: Two Orations of the Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
Book ID: 218 Page: 25
Section: 2D2
But what will be the end of this discourse? Is it not evident that it should close with a hymn to the mighty goddess!A mother of gods and men! O assistant and partner in the throne of mighty Jupiter!
Quote ID: 5402
Time Periods: 01234
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 165c
Section: 2D2
NOTE: As pagans used to dedicate certain temples to certain gods, so Xns began the practice of dedicating their cathedrals and basilicas to the dead saints.
Quote ID: 6169
Time Periods: 345
Legacy of Greece, The
Edited by R. W. Livingstone
Book ID: 469 Page: 43/44
Section: 2D2
Those who have observed the actual state of Christianity in Mediterranean countries cannot lay much stress on the difference between Christian monotheism and pagan polytheism. The early Church fought against the tendency to interpose objects of worship between God and man; Mariolatry came in through a loophole, and the worship of the masses in Roman Catholic countries is far more pagan than the service-books. In the imagination of many simple Catholics, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are the chief potentates in their Olympus.
Quote ID: 9039
Time Periods: 47
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 55
Section: 2D2
Throughout history, and especially during the fourth and fifth centuries, the basic category for thinking about Mary was that of paradox: Virgin and Mother; Human Mother of One who is God, Theotokos.
Quote ID: 3205
Time Periods: 45
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 56
Section: 2D2
In the fifth century, the fear of mingling the divine and human natures in the person of Christ led Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, to stipulate that because it was only the human nature that had been born of her, Mary should be called not Theotokos, which gave the blasphemous impression that she had given birth to the divine nature itself and which therefore sounded like the title of the mother deities of paganism, but Christotokos, “the one who gave birth to Christ.”
Quote ID: 3206
Time Periods: 5
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 57
Section: 2D2
And, as he argued elsewhere, that is what she was on the icons: Theotokos and therefore the orthodox and God-pleasing substitute for the pagan worship of demons. At the same time, the defenders of the icons insisted that “when we worship her icon, we do not, in pagan fashion Hellēnikōs, regard her as a goddess thean but as the Theotokos.”That had come a long way even from the consideration of her as the Second Eve. It was probably the greatest quantum leap in the whole history of the language and thought about Mary, as we are considering it in this book. How and why could she have come so far so fast? At least three aspects of an answer to that historical question are suggested by the texts: the growth of the title Theotokos; in connection with the title, the rise of a liturgical observance called “the commemoration of Mary”; and, as a somewhat speculative explanation for both the title and the festival, the deepening perception that there was a need to identify some totally human person who was the crown of creation, once that was declared to be an inadequate identification for Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God and Second Person of the Trinity.
Pastor John notes: John’s Note: John of Damascus
Quote ID: 3207
Time Periods: 345
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 57
Section: 2D2
The origins of the title Mother of God are obscure. In spite of the diligence of Hugo Rahner and others, there is no altogether incontestable evidence that it was used before the fourth century.
Quote ID: 3208
Time Periods: 345
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 64
Section: 2D2,3C1
What we have seen so far in the Mariology of Athanasius would seem to indicate that, in a sense quite different from that implied by Harnack, “what the Arians had taught about Christ, the orthodox now taught about Mary,” so that these creaturely predicates did not belong to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, but to the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.
Quote ID: 3211
Time Periods: 34567
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 67
Section: 2D2,2C
One of the most profound and most persistent roles of the Virgin Mary in history has been her function as a bridge builder to other traditions, other cultures, and other religions. From the Latin word for “bridge builder” care the term pontifex, a priestly title in Roman paganism. In the form pontifex maximus it became one of the terms in the cult of the divine Roman emperor, and for that reason it was disavowed by Christian emperors already in the fourth century. Not long thereafter it was taken up by Christian bishops and archbishops.
Quote ID: 3212
Time Periods: 2345
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 97/98
Section: 2D2
Augustine identified the Virgin Mary as “nostra tympanistria,” because, like Miriam before the children of Israel, she led the people of God and the angels of heaven in the praise of the Almighty. {3} And thousands of English-speaking Protestant congregations in this century-most of them without realizing that they were carrying on this typology of Miriam and Mary, and many without realizing that they were addressing Mary at all-have attributed to her a role as the adornment of worship and leader of the heavenly choir, in the words of John A.L. Riley’s hymn of 1906, “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones”:O higher than the cherubim,
More glorious than the seraphim,
Lead their praises, Alleluia!
Thou Bearer of th’ eternal Word,
Most gracious, magnify the Lord, Alleluia!
. . . which was to say that when the angels of heaven, the cherubim and seraphim, praised God, they were led by one whom the Archangel Gabriel had hailed as “most gracious” ....
Quote ID: 3214
Time Periods: 03457
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 104
Section: 2D2
For Christ himself had said about John the Baptist: “Never has there appeared on earth a mother’s son greater than John the Baptist.”No mother’s son was greater than John the Baptist, but one mother’s daughter was greater than any mother’s son or daughter, namely, Mary the Mother of God, whom Gregory of Nyssa earlier in the same treatise called “Mary without stain [amiantos].”
Quote ID: 3215
Time Periods: 04
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 105
Section: 2D2
Anders Nygren saw the idea that “the human is raised up to the Divine” as one that the Greek church father Irenaeus shared “with Hellenistic piety generally.” And there were clear echoes of Hellenism in the Christian version of the doctrine.
Quote ID: 3216
Time Periods: 047
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 109
Section: 2D2
The Mother of God whom it was permissible to depict on an icon was the Queen of Heaven.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Jeremiah
Quote ID: 3217
Time Periods: 01
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 119
Section: 2D2
Jerome felt qualified to say: “I beseech my readers not to suppose that in praising virginity I have in the least disparaged matrimony, and separated the saints of the Old Testament from those of the New, that is to say, those who had wives and those who altogether refrained from embraces of women.” Nevertheless, Jerome did in fact go on to disparage matrimony- and women in general.….
The virgin’s aim is to appear less comely; she will wrong herself so as to hide her natural attractions. The married woman has the paint laid on before her mirror, and, to the insult of her Maker, strives to acquire something more than her natural beauty. Then comes the prattling of infants, the noisy household, children watching for her word and waiting for her kiss.
Quote ID: 3219
Time Periods: 5
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 125
Section: 2D2
During the High Middle Ages of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,….
The sheer number of references to her in poetry and prose, together with her ever-deepening prominence in the visual arts, would make it difficult not to agree with Otto von Simson’s judgment that “the age was indeed the age of the Virgin.”
….
If the systematic clarification of the title Mediatrix was the principal objective expression of Mariology and the chief theological contribution to the Christian teaching about Mary during this period.
Quote ID: 3220
Time Periods: 567
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 130
Section: 2D2,2C
As “the Queen of Angels, the ruling Lady of the world, and the Mother of him who purifies the world,” she could acquire such titles as these: Mother of Truth; Mother and Daughter of Humility; Mother of Christians; Mother of Peace; My Most Merciful Lady. She was also called, in a term reminiscent of Augustine, the City of God.….
What set the devotion and thought of this period apart from what preceded it was the growing emphasis on the office of Mary as Mediatrix. The title itself seems to have appeared first in Eastern theology, where she was addressed as “the Mediatrix of law and of grace.”
Quote ID: 3221
Time Periods: 45
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 131
Section: 2D2
It was, however, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that it achieved widespread acceptance. The title was a means of summarizing what had come to be seen as her twofold function: she was “the way by which the Savior came” to humanity in the incarnation and the redemption, and she was also the one “through whom we ascend to him who descended through her to us..., through whom we have access to the Son..., so that through her he who through her was given to us might take us up to himself.” The term Mediatrix referred to both of these aspects of Mary’s mediatorial position.….
Thus she had become “the gate of Paradise, which restored God to the world and opened heaven to us.”
Quote ID: 3222
Time Periods: 7
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 131
Section: 2D2
“O woman marvelously unique and uniquely marvelous,” Anselm prayed, “through whom the elements are renewed, hell is redeemed, the demons are trampled under foot, humanity is saved, and angels are restored!” The reference to Mary’s restoration of the angels was an allusion to the idea that the number of the elect would make up for the number of the angels who had fallen; Mary was seen as the one through whom “not only a life once lost is returned to humanity, but also the beatitude of angelic sublimity is increased,” because through her participation in salvation the hosts of angels regained their full strength.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: What?
Quote ID: 3223
Time Periods: 7
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 132/133
Section: 2C,2D2
Mary’s cooperation in the plan of salvation helped to explain the puzzling circumstance in the Gospel narratives, that after his resurrection Christ had not appeared first to his mother: “Why should he have appeared to her when she undoubtedly knew about the resurrection even before he suffered and rose?”….
This title Mediatrix, however, applied not only to Mary’s place in the history of salvation but also to her continuing position as intercessor between Christ and humanity.
….
The remembrance of Mary’s “ancient mercies” aroused in a believer the hope and confidence to “return to thee [Mary], and through thee to God the Father and to thy only Son,” so that it was possible to “demand salvation of thee [Mary].” The consummation of the believer’s glory was the awareness that Mary stood as the Mediatrix between him and her Son; in fact, God had chosen her for the specific task of pleading the cause of humanity before her Son. And so she was “the Mother of the kingdom of heaven, Mary, the Mother of God, my only refuge in every need.”
Quote ID: 3224
Time Periods: 47
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 134
Section: 2D2
It was perceived as an appropriate honor and an authentic expression of her position in the divine order when Mary was acclaimed as second in dignity only to God himself, who had taken up habitation in her. The ground of this dignity was the part she had taken in the redemption, more important than that of any other ordinary human being.
Quote ID: 3225
Time Periods: ?
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 154
Section: 2D2
But even such Reformers as Martin Luther, who in 1525 protested vigorously against this iconoclasm, protested no less vigorously against what Luther called the “abominable idolatry grewliche Abgӧtterey” of Medieval Mariology, an idolatry that was, he said, “not praising Mary, but slandering her in the extreme and making an idol of her.”
Quote ID: 3226
Time Periods: 7
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 154
Section: 2D2
Article XIX and XX of Ulrich Zwingli’s Sixty-Seven Articles of 1523 declared that because “Christ is the only Mediator between God and us,” it followed “that we do not need any mediator beyond this life but him.” For, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, “He is our Mediator.” Also quoting the words of the New Testament, “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
Quote ID: 3227
Time Periods: 7
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 191
Section: 2D2
Augustine had listed the great saints of the Old and New Testaments, who had nevertheless been sinners. Then he continued: “We must make an exception of the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it touches the subject of sins, out of honor to the Lord. For from him we know what abundance of grace for overcoming sin in every particular ad vincendum omni ex parte peccatum was conferred upon her who had the merit to conceive and bear him who undoubtedly had no sin.”
Quote ID: 3231
Time Periods: 45
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 192
Section: 2D2
During the High Middle Ages no one spoke more articulately or eloquently about Mary than one of the great preachers of Christian history, Bernard of Clairvaux.….
Bernard was adamant. In his famous Epistle 174, addressed to the canons of the cathedral of Lyons, he insisted: “If it is appropriate to say what the church believes and if what she believes is true, then I say that the glorious [Virgin] conceived by the Holy Spirit, but was not also herself conceived this way. I say that she gave birth as a virgin, but not that she was born of a virgin.
….
Quote ID: 3232
Time Periods: 7
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 193
Section: 2D2
Yet, the virgin birth of Christ from one who had herself been conceived and born in sin did not seem to resolve the question of how he could be sinless in his birth if his mother was not.….
But Bernard also added the important stipulation that he was prepared to defer to the judgement of Rome on the entire question.
Quote ID: 3233
Time Periods: 7
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 195
Section: 2D2
The most formidable argument that Bernard of Clairvaux and then Thomas Aquinas, as well as their later followers, had directed against the immaculate conception of Mary was the charge that if she had been conceived without original sin, she did not need redemption- which would detract from “the dignity of Christ as the Universal Savior of all.”
Quote ID: 3234
Time Periods: 7
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 197
Section: 2D2
Jean Gerson took the affirmation the rest of the way, paraphrasing the Apostles’ Creed in Middle French: “I believe that in the sacrament of baptism God grants, to every creature who is worthy of receiving it, pardon from original sin, in which every person born of a mother has been conceived, with the sole exceptions of our Savior Jesus Christ and his glorious Virgin Mother.”
Quote ID: 3235
Time Periods: 7
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 199
Section: 2D2
That would not come until 8 December 1854, with the bull Ineffabilis Deus of Pope Pius IX, which declared: “The doctrine which holds that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in consideration of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, has been revealed by God and must, therefore, firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful.” And less than four years later, on 25 March 1858, at the French village of Lourdes in the Pyrenees, a “lovely lady” appeared to the peasant girl, Bernadette Soubiroux, and announced, in the vernacular dialect: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
Quote ID: 3236
Time Periods: 7
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 201
Section: 2D2
Nevertheless, one event in the history of Mary at the precise middle of the twentieth century, together with its aftermath, demands inclusion as the final- or, at any rate, the most recent- stage in that history: the issuance, on 1 November 1950, of the papal bull Munificentissimus Deus. In this solemn proclamation, which presumably carried the stamp of the papal infallibility decreed by the First Vatican Council, the belief in the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary, long held to be true among the faithful and by theologians, was promulgated as a dogma of the Roman Catholic church by Pope Pius XII: “that the immaculate Mother of God, Mary Semper Virgo, when the course of her earthly….
Quote ID: 3237
Time Periods: 7
Mary Through the Centuries
Jaroslav Pelikan
Book ID: 148 Page: 204
Section: 2D2
life was run, was assumed in body and soul to heavenly glory.” Thus it became obligatory in 1950 for Roman Catholics to believe and teach that, as the Spanish Marian mystic sister María de Jesús de Agreda had said in her Life of the Virgin Mary already in 1670, Mary “was elevated to the right hand of the Son and the true God, and situated at the same royal throne of the Most Blessed Trinity, whither neither men nor angels nor seraphs have before attained, nor will ever attain for all eternity. This is the highest and the most excellent privilege of our Queen and Lady: to be at the same throne as the divine Persons and to have a place in it, as Empress, when all the rest of humanity are only servants and ministers of the supreme King.”
Quote ID: 3238
Time Periods: 7
Medieval Popular Religion 1000-1500
John Shinners (Edited)
Book ID: 150 Page: 5
Section: 2D2
But when they made bitter complaint and demanded justice, the Blessed Virgin answered them in these terms: “Spare me, I pray you, and be not troublesome to me, because I am not willing at present to lay any grievous burden upon him. For his wife, the Lady Ada, renders me a certain service which binds me to her in such bonds of intimacy that I am unable to allow any harm to befall either her or her husband.” And when the two saints sought to know what this service was, she answered: “That angelical salutation which was the beginning of all my joy on earth she repeats to me sixty times each day – twenty times while she lies prostrate, twenty times kneeling, twenty times standing upright, either in the church or in her chamber or in some private place, to wit: Ave Maris, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tu Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”
Quote ID: 3244
Time Periods: 7
Minor Latin Poets, LCL 484: Minor Latin Poets II
Minor Latin Poets
Book ID: 153 Page: 769
Section: 2D2
Rutilius Namatianus (see below)Title of work: A Voyage Home to Gaul Book I
Line 47-50
“Listen, O fairest queen of thy world, Rome, welcomed amid the starry skies, listen, thou mother {a} of men and mother of gods, thanks to thy temples we are not far from heaven:
Quote ID: 3272
Time Periods: 5
Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Book ID: 155 Page: 214/215
Section: 2D2
Dr. Von Dollinger tells us that, “Originally Juno was the female deity of nature in its wildest extent, the deification of womanhood, woman in the sphere of the divine, and therefore also her name of Juno was the appellative designation of a female genius or guardian spirit. Every wife had her own Juno, and the female slaves of Rome swore by the Juno of their mistresses; and as the genius of a man could be propitiated,so could also the Juno of a woman. The whole of a woman’s life, in all its moments, from the cradle to the grave, was thus under the conduct and protection of this goddess, but especially her two chief destinations, marriage and maternity. Accordingly, the Roman women sacrificed to Juno Natalis on their birth-day, and observed in like manner the Matronalia in the temple of Juno Lucina, in commemoration of the institution of marriage by Romulus, and the fidelity of the ravished Sabine women.
Quote ID: 3311
Time Periods: 0
Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Book ID: 155 Page: 216
Section: 2D2
As queen of heaven and the chaste or immaculate protectress of women, Juno was substituted by the Church of the middle ages for the historic and lowly Jewish maiden, the mother of Christ, as she is represented in the New Testament and in early Christian art. It was a shrewd device thus to gain the ascendancy in all social and political life be securing the fervour, affection and constancy of the women, who even yet are the most enthusiastic devotees of the worship of the Virgin Mary as Juno Lucina, in all countries where the Latin Church is established.
Quote ID: 3312
Time Periods: 4567
Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Book ID: 155 Page: 216
Section: 2D2
And again, in the Paradise, the poet says:“In such composed and seemly fellowship.
Such faithful and such fair equality,
In so sweet household, Mary at my birth
Bestow’d me, call’d on with loud cries”{3}
In Dante’s day then, it was customary to invoke the Virgin Mary in child-birth, just as Juno Lucina was invoked by the Pagan ancestors of the Italian people; so that Mary merely took the place of Juno. I doubt not that the custom still prevails.
Quote ID: 3313
Time Periods: 07
Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Book ID: 155 Page: 218
Section: 2D2
The Apocryphal History of the Nativity of Mary and the Infant Saviour, thus represents the Virgin when a vestal at the Temple of Jerusalem; “her face was shining as snow, and its brightness could hardly be borne; angels brought food to her; she was the most humble, pure, charitable, and perfect of all; was never angry, never uttered a slander; her words were full of grace, and the truth of God was ever on her lips; her only nourishment was angelic food; her conversation was with the angels; the sick were healed by a touch of her hand; and the poor were fed by her bounty.”
Quote ID: 3314
Time Periods: 7
Pagan Book of Days, The
Nigel Pennick
Book ID: 259 Page: 1
Section: 2D2
One of the most important elements of Paganism is its respect for the goddess and the feminine principle. The elder faith accepts it as self-evident that, for there to be balance, the female and the male must complement each other. Worship of the goddess as Isis, Shakti, Kuan-yin, Aphrodite, Freya, Selene, and in other forms takes place in Egyptian, Hindu,Taoist, Greek, Norse, Roman, and Native American religions, as well as in moon worship. It provides a balance with patriarchal forms of worship such as Druidism, which are essentially solar-based paths.
Quote ID: 6514
Time Periods: 01
Pindar, LCL 056: Pindar I
Pindar
Book ID: 145 Page: 259
Section: 2D2
Pyth. 3.77.79
But for my part, I wish to pray
to the Mother, to whom, along with Pan, the maidens
often sing before my door at night,
for she is a venerable goddess.{5}
Quote ID: 3161
Time Periods: 0
Pindar, LCL 485: Pindar II
Several
Book ID: 146 Page: 59
Section: 2D2
Nemean 6 For Alkimidas of AiginaWinner, Boys’ Wrestling, Lines 1-2
There is one race of men, another of gods, but from one mother{1}
we both draw our breath.
Quote ID: 8165
Time Periods: 0
Pindar, LCL 485: Pindar II
Several
Book ID: 146 Page: 379
Section: 2D2
Fragment 143, Line 146
Scholion on Iliad 21.100 (“of Athena ‘beside father Zeus’”) “on the right hand”, as Pindar says:
“who nearest the fire-breathing thunderbolt
at the right hand of your father.
you sit.”
Plutarch, Table-Talk. “And Pindar says explicitly (of Athena), ‘she, sitting nearest the fire-breathing thunderbolt.’” Aristeds, Oration 37 (Hymn to Athena). “Again Pinda says that she sits at the right hand of her father and receives his orders for the gods.”
Quote ID: 3176
Time Periods: 012
End of quotes